While ...Democrats ...Biden and ...Dodd have been tearing open every mattress to find ... Bolton's sinful behavior--and finding none--the gravity of the U.N.'s internal crises have only become more apparent....

[T]he gravest indication of ...crisis comes in the form of ...disclosure of a 1998 memorandum ... Annan may have lied to... the ...inquiry investigating the...Oil for Food scandal....

[A] source close to the investigation:..."if there isn't a plausible disaffirmation" of the Cotecna memo, Mr. Annan's...future at the U.N. will be very much in doubt....Kojo Annan continues not to cooperate....

As long asyou've got a rich man on your arm, you don't need a big bag.

--Elizabeth Rickard

The $100 billion Iraqi Oil for Food program was by far the largest relief operation in the history of the United Nations. By extension, it's rapidly becoming the U.N.'s largest-ever scandal....

Those included rewarding friends and allies world-wide with oil allocations on very favorable terms, as well as extracting large kickbacks from oil traders and suppliers of humanitarian goods....

There can be little doubt that U.N. mismanagement contributed greatly to the negative perception of the anti-Saddam containment policy. There is also little doubt that the reward and kickback scheme--as well the possibility of exposure--was a factor as some countries weighed whether to back U.S.-led regime change in Iraq. There is even reason to suspect that some of the Saddam friends and allies who benefited may have been members of the U.N. Secretariat.

eave it to the Frenchto make pro-islamofascist-terrorist radical chic all the rage.

They and their moneygrubbing, Oil-for-Food defrauding cohorts abroad, and their power-hungry would-be terrorist sympathizers here, are all sporting "THE LOOK."

(How many of those oh so trendy Kerry-clinton-Kennedy hate-America, blame-America-first sound bites will Al-Jazeera broadcast today?)

The trusty triad's half-truths, exaggerations and outright lies, confounded by fog of war, vagaries of peace and uncharted territory of asymmetric netherworlds, remind us that things are not always what they first seem. The UN Oil-for-Food scandal, for example, has shown us it was not "going to war with Iraq" that was "all about oil," but rather, "notgoing to war with Iraq." The Left, we now see, had that one, (as they have most things), exactly backward.

The dernier cri of seditious and corrupt Leftists everywhere, pro-islamofascist-terrorist radical chic renders the Left, irrespective of policy, no less dangerous to Western civilization than the terrorists they aid and abet.

The Bush Doctine is built on two pillars, one -- that the United States must maintain its absolute military superiority in every part of the world, and second -- that the United States has the right for preemptive action.

Now, both these propositions, taken on their own, are quite valid propositions, but if you put them together, they establish two kinds of sovereignty in the world, the sovereignty of the United States, which is inviolate, not subject to any international constraints, and the rest of the world, which is subject to the Bush Doctrine.

To me, it is reminiscent to [sic] George Orwell's "Animal Farm," that "All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

eorge Soros could not have more clearly enunciated the lethal danger that he and John Kerry and the clintons and the rest of his leftist cabal pose for America.

Yesterday, at the "progressive," i.e., ultra-extremist left-wing liberal, "Take Back America" confab, Mr. Soros confirmed the obvious: 9/11 was dispositive for the Dems; that is, 9/11 accelerated what eight years of the clintons had set into motion, namely, the demise of a Democratic party that is increasingly irrelevant, unflinchingly corrupt, unwaveringly self-serving, chronically moribund and above all, lethally, seditiously dangerous.

"All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Apparently missing the irony, George Soros chastised America with these words even as he was trying his $25,000,000, 527-end-run damnedest to render himself "more equal than others" in order to foist his radical, paranoic, deadly dementia on an entire nation.

"Animal Farm" is George Orwell's satirical allegory of the Russian Revolution; but it could just as easily be the story of the Democratic Party of today, with the

Soros' little speech reveals everything we need to know about the Left, to wit:

its naivete about the War on Terror,

its preference for demagoguery over rational argument, and ideology and reacquisition of power over national security,

its mindset, which is inextricably bound to its failed, tortuous, reckless schemes, relics of a different time, a different war and a different enemy.

Soros is correct when he states that each of the two pillars of the Bush Doctine--the United States maintenance of absolute military superiority and the United States right of preemptive action--are "valid propositions" [in a post-9/11 world].

But when he proceeds from there to argue that the validity of each of these two [essential] pillars is somehow nullified by the resultant unequalled power that these two pillars, when taken together, vest in the United States, rational thought and national-security primacy give way to dogmatic Leftist neo-neoliberal ideology.

What is, in fact, "inviolate" here is the neo-neoliberal doctrine of U.S. sovereignty, which states simply that there must be none, that we must yield our sovereignty to the United Nations. Because this Leftist tenet is inviolate, and because it is the antithesis of the concept of U.S. sovereignty enunciated by the Bush Doctrine and the concept of U.S. sovereignty required by the War on Terror, rabid Leftists like Soros conclude that we must trash the latter two inconvenient concepts--even if critical to the survival of our country.

It is precisely here where Soros and the Left fail utterly to understand the War on Terror. They cannot see beyond their own ideology and lust for power. They have become a danger to this country no less lethal than the terrorists they aid and abet.

I think this administration has the right strategic vision and has taken many of the steps needed to get that long-term strategy rolling.

Where I give them the failing grade is in explaining that vision to the American public and the world. Key example: this White House enshrines preemptive war in the latest National Security Strategy and that scares the hell out of a lot of Americans, not to mention our allies. Why? This administration fails to distinguish sufficiently under what conditions that strategy makes reasonable sense.

My point is this: when you are explicit about the world being divided into globalization's Core and Gap, you can distinguish between the different security rule sets at work in each.

Nothing has changed about strategic deterrence or the concept of mutual-assured destruction (or MAD) within the Core, so fears about preemptive wars triggering World War III are misplaced.

When this administration talks about preemption, they're talking strictly about the Gap - not the Core. The strategic stability that defines the Core is not altered one whit by this new strategy, because preemption is all about striking first against actors or states you believe - quite reasonably - are undeterrable in the normal sense.

I'm not a Republican. I'm not a conservative. I'm not a very great admirer of the president in many ways, but I think that my condition is... that this is an administration that wakes up every morning wondering how to make life hard for the forces of Jihad and how to make as hard as possible an unapologetic defense of civilization against this kind of barbarism... and though the Bush administration has been rife with disappointment on this and incompetent, I nonetheless feel that they have some sense of that spirit.

I don't get that... I don't get that feeling from anyone who even sought the Democratic nomination.

I would [therefore] have to vote for the reelection of President Bush.

merica's real two-front war: fundamentalist Islam on the right and a fundamentally seditious clintonoid neo-neoliberalism on the left, both anarchic, both messianically, lethally intolerant, both amorally perverse, both killing Americans, both placing America at grave risk, both quite insane.

If we are to prevail, the rules of engagement--on both fronts--must change.

Marquis of Queensberry niceties, multicultural hypersensitivity, unipolar-power guilt, hegemony aversion (which is self-sabotage in the extreme--we must capture what we conquer--oil is the terrorist's lifeblood)... and, most important,the mutual-protection racket in Washington--pre-9/11 anachronisms all--are luxuries we can no longer afford.

Notwithstanding, the underlying premise of our hyperfastidious polity, (that we must remain in the system to save the system) is fallacious at best and tantamount to Lady Liberty lifting herself up by her own bootstraps.

neocommunistpolitical movement, a tipsy-topsy, infantile perversion of the Marxist-Leninist model, global in scope, beginning in the post-cold-war, unipolar 1990s, led by the '60s neoliberal baby-boomer "intelligentsia," that seeks power without responsibility, i.e., that seeks to dilute American power by concentrating power in said '60s neoliberals while yielding America's sovereignty to the United Nations, i.e., while surrendering to the terrorists, as it continues the traditional '60s neoliberal feint, namely: (1) concern for social justice, (2) distain for bureaucracy, and (3) the championing of entrepreneurship for the great unwashed.

If Act I was a thinly veiled allegory about naked clintonism, then Act II is a parable about the plan for world domination by the Establishment, aged hippies in pinstripes all, with their infantile, solipsistic world view amazingly untouched by time.

l Fromis sounding the alarm. "Unless we convince Americans that Democrats are strong on national security," he warns his party, "Democrats will continue to lose elections."

Helloooo? That the Democrats have to be spoon-fed what should be axiomatic post-9/11 is, in and of itself, incontrovertible proof that From's advice is insufficient to solve their problem.

From's failure to fully lay out the nature of the Democrats' problem is not surprising: he is the guy who helped seal his party's fate. It was his Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) that institutionalized the proximate cause of the problem, clintonism, and legitimized its two eponymic provincial operators on the national stage. The "Third Way" and "triangulation" don't come from the same Latin root for no reason.

That "convince" is From's operative word underscores the Democrats' dilemma. Nine-eleven was transformative. It is no longer sufficient merely to convince. One must demonstrate, demonstrate convincingly, if you will which means both in real time and historically.

When it comes to national security, Americans will no longer take any chances. Turning the turn of phrase back on itself, the era of the Placebo President is over. (Incidentally, the oft-quote out-of-context sentence fragment alluded to here transformed meaningless clinton triangulation into a meaningful if deceptive soundbite.)

Although From is loath to admit it -- the terror in his eyes belies his facile solution -- the Democratic party's problem transcends its anti-war contingent.

With a philosophy that relinquishes our national sovereignty -- and relinquishes it reflexively and to the UN no less -- the Democratic party is, by definition, the party of national insecurity.

With policy ruled by pathologic self-interest-- witness the "Lieberman Paradigm," Kerry's "regime change" bon mot (gone bad), Edwards' and the clintons' brazen echoes thereof (or, alternatively, Pelosi's less strident wartime non-putdown putdown) and, of course, the clincher -- eight years of the clintons' infantilism, grotesquerie and utter failure -- the Democratic party is, historically and in real time, the party of national insecurity.

The Democrats used to be able to wallpaper their national insecurity with dollars and demogoguery. But that was before 9/11.

By BRIAN ROSS and RHONDA SCHWARTZ

Dec. 1, 2004 -- Former American fugitive Marc Rich was a middleman for several of Iraq's suspect oil deals in February 2001, just one month after his pardon from President Clinton, according to oil industry shipping records obtained by ABC News.

And a U.S. criminal investigation is looking into whether Rich, as well as several other prominent oil traders, made illegal payments to Iraq in order to obtain the lucrative oil contracts.

"Without that kind of middleman, the system would not work because the major oil companies did not want to deal with Iraq because there was a mandated kickback," said human rights investigator John Fawcett.

Another broker was New York oil trader Ben Pollner, head of Taurus Oil, who investigators say handled several billion dollars worth of the transactions now under investigation.

Pollner told ABC News he paid no bribes or kickbacks to the Iraqi regime.

Rich is still living in Switzerland and unavailable for comment.

The roles of several American oil companies, including ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil, are also under investigation. ChevronTexaco received subpoenas requesting information for two separate grand jury proceedings, and said they were cooperating fully with both investigations.

The U.N. oil-for-food corruption scandal only continues to grow in scope. Today, Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who is leading the congressional investigation into the program, said that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan should resign because the scandal occurred on his watch.

"I think there's a terrible stain on the credibility and the reputation of the United Nations, there's no doubt about that," said Coleman. "If we're ever to get to the bottom, how can you get there if the guy who was in charge during the course of this fraud and corruption is the guy now who is supposed to be ferreting it out?"

Top officials of the U.N., including Annan, are accused of looking the other way as some $21 billion meant for humanitarian aid was stolen by the Saddam Hussein regime.

Uncovered in the federal criminal investigation were previously undisclosed payments to Annan's son, Kojo, from his employer Cotecna. The Swiss company had been specifically hired to monitor the oil-for-food program.

Annan's son left the company in 1998 but received payments until this year.

Secretary-general since 1997, Annan said this week he was unaware of the payments. "Naturally I was very disappointed and surprised, yes," he said.

Also under criminal investigation is the U.N. official Annan put in charge of the program, Benon Sevan.

Documents discovered by U.S. forces in Iraq suggest Sevan received payments in the form of oil contacts from the Hussein regime, although Sevan has denied any wrongdoing.

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